This 1.5 day conference, "The Quality of Cancer Care: From Evidence to Action," is the third Evanston Northwestern Healthcare/ Northwestern University-sponsored conference on outcomes management. The conference will be held on September 17th-18th, 2003. The conference goal is to provide participants with the latest evidence on how to identify and measure quality cancer care along with information and methods on how to integrate that evidence into practice. This will be accomplished via a combination of lectures, interactive discussions, panel discussions, and a peer-reviewed poster presentation. Throughout, the conference will emphasize the use of outcomes management principles, broadly defined as the use of clinical, quality, and cost data in applied medical settings to change practice and/or demonstrate value. An opening keynote address will be given by Carolyn Clancy, MD, Director, Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). Dr. Clancy will provide a broad overview of the challenges and opportunities facing outcomes research and outcomes management, setting the stage for specific lectures and discussion to follow. David Nash, MD, MBA, the Dr. Raymond C. and Doris N. Grandon Professor of Health Policy at Jefferson Medical College, will give our closing keynote address. Speaking from his vast experience engineering successful outcomes management, Dr. Nash will reflect on the conference goals and objectives, specifically addressing the presentations on diagnosis and treatment of breast cancer. The conference will include three inter-related sessions: Building the Evidence Base to Support Outcomes Management in Oncology; Oncology Outcomes Management in Action; and a Special Symposium on Breast Cancer. The first session will focus on the current evidence base for quality cancer. Representatives from key organizations will highlight current cancer-related quality of care and/or performance improvement initiatives occurring at national, regional, or local levels. A panel discussion will present government, provider and patient perspectives on the challenges and issues involved in providing optimal cancer care. Presenters in the second session will describe outcomes research and performance improvement projects in oncology that illustrate successful implementation of current knowledge about quality cancer care. A peer-reviewed poster session will present additional research findings. Our concluding session will include presentations on quality and performance improvement in breast cancer screening/detection and treatment. Conference proceedings will be made for distribution, and a conference summary will be submitted for peer-reviewed publication. Approximately 200-250 people (health care providers, researchers, and administrators) are expected to attend.